Random musings on weight loss ads, etc

I can’t help but feel that much of the discussion on anorexia that takes place online is a bit of a waste. I got distracted and ended up reading this article on Newsweek about anorexia, particularly as it pertains to online groups, on facebook. And it’s like, I read about how pro-ana groups are promoting weight loss of wacky proportions, and I can’t really see how it’s any different then the ads I encounter pretty much every day online. Just right now to see, I go to my food blog and check the Google ads at the top of the page, and there’s two that talk about losing 12 lbs of fat every two weeks. That’s 6 lbs a week, which is insane considering that 2 lbs a week is the maximum amount that one can lose and still be healthy about it. And I find it weird that anyone could enter into a discussion about online weight loss groups, and the crazy things that they’re encouraging, without examining these ads as well. The article specifically mentions a facebook group that got shut down, along with the account of the group’s founder, because the founder used the group to ‘encourage others to post their pictures online and then harshly detail their “problem areas.’ This reminds me of an ad I saw online just a little while ago, showing someone’s midsection who happened to have a bit of a muffin-top (like, not obese or anything, just a bit of a muffin-top), with the text essentially detailing the problem area. it just seems like layers and layers of imitation to me, whereupon when one get’s labeled ‘anorexia’, it’s bad, but any other circumstance is just people doing whatever it takes to become thin and ‘healthy’.

To me, it seems like anorexia, and, for that matter, obesity, are just symptoms of other circumstances, things that aren’t as glamorous to talk about or as easy to pretend to solve as just shutting down a few websites.

In any case, Google Adsense has an ad review thing they’ve added recently, which I just stumbled up on today, and I’m going to use it to filter out some of the ridiculous weight loss stuff on my site. I don’t like the idea that the ads are gunking up my site, and, as I hate it when I go to recipe websites and see weight loss ads, I don’t want visitors to my site to have to experience that as well.